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I finished wiring up the ESC, the steering and shift servos, and the motor. The Sidewinder 4 has a foxed 5 V BEC that I’m using for the receiver and the shift servo. I have the ProModler DS470BLHV on a Castle 10 A BEC and a RX bypass adapter with the BEC set to 8 A where the servo has > 450 oz-in of torque and a transit time < 0.12 sec. it can be run up to 8.4 V, but I decided to leave some margin. I added a JST plug to the battery wires for future expansion.

Here’s how it looks after some clean up. This build has a lot of wires! It’s only going to get worse as I add lights and the sound kit, lol!

We fired it up and spun the wheels. No smoke or other nonsense aside from having programmed the Sidewinder 4 for the wrong polarity, which was easy to fix. I also fine tuned the end points for the shift servo. And the body still fits without conflicts with the electronics! Hooray! It’s a little tight once everything is in there ...The ProModler servo is impressive at throwing the front wheels around on the bench. I can’t wait to see how it performs on the trails! There’s no shortage of speed in second gear and fantastic low seed control in first with the HH Revolver. I’m happy with how the build is coming together so far.

We made some more progress over the past couple weeks - some of it a few weekends back, but I haven’t done a good job keeping up with the build thread.

The next step was to complete the roof, which is done now. The hinges for the lid on the back side are interesting. So many small parts! And the metal for the c-clips that hold the hinge pins in place is soft. Seems unlikely you could get them off again. The latch for the roof is clever and works well. I’m keeping the roof removable and have magnets on the way to hold it in place. Here’s how it looks now. The seams line up reasonably well. I had to do some filing on the driver’s side, but the rest fit together with no issues.

Few more steps forward over the past week. I worked at the dining room table - hence the towel ‘pit mat’ in the pictures below. Wife gets crabby otherwise and harmony is important these days, lol!

I decided to focus on the bed cleats next. There at 58 of them according to other threads. I wasn’t brave enough to count them myself for fear of psyching myself out. I sanded each one after cutting it off the sprue to ensure a flush fit for each against the side of the bed. They’re tiny buggers and hard to handle, but you can hold the cleat in needle nose pliers and sand away without marring the cleat - good thing since the sanding would be nearly impossible otherwise.

Here’s how one side looks with the cleats installed. Pretty cool plus feels like a sort of RC right of passage, lol!

And some close-ups for effect. Feel like I need to get as much mileage as possible out of all the hours spent on sanding and fit-checking. The cleats are neat and feel strong enough to use for real.

Back is done too. Looks very similar to the sides, but feels like a bridge crossed anyway, lol!

I also attached the wheel well covers. The lack of guides on the body makes these parts (and others) tricky. It’s a good idea to use masking tape or similar to set the part placement so you can add the glue and press the parts together without a lot of fussing. This kit has definitely inspired the most ‘next step planning’ that I’ve ever done on an RC! The covers aren’t perfect, but I’m happy with the results overall

I also braved the front window bezels. The lack of guides on the parts and the bendiness of the bezels and the front face of the cab makes attaching these two parts extra tricky. Deep breaths and focus on patience, lol! I’m happy with the result - not perfect, but decent given the difficulty ...

And played around with the interior some more. Thinking I’ll use the dash that came with the Tamiya Scania parts tree with the seats. It fits well and looks nice - I need a driver next so make sure there’s enough room for legs!

I’m borrowing this one from a few other builds. Really liked the idea of a removable top for adding a electronics to the engine bay (smoker and sound system in my case) and keeping easy access to the crew compartment.

The first step is getting some magnets. I spent a while looking at options and settled on 6 mm OD x 3 mm thick nickel coated ferrites.

These are plenty strong and hold the roof well. Some of the builds I looked at used stronger rare earth magnets, but I’d actually be worried about prying the lid off if the magnets were any stronger.

The next step is getting some Styrene building materials. I used Plastruct 0.25” square rod to match the footprint for the magnets

You can tell I forgot to take pictures in the beginning - hence the short rod. It was nice out so I decided to work in the backyard.

Also picked up a Kerf saw and Miter box. It works great for small pieces. I’m hoping to use it for the wood truck bed also. We’ll see how long it stays sharp - but then, it didn’t cost much either. The seller I used is sold out now, but it’s easy to find elsewhere. The description is: Olson Saw 35-241 Fine Kerf Saw 35-550 42 tpi with Aluminum Thin Slot Miter Box. The file in the picture was separate.

A few minutes of sawing and sanding later and I had a handful of magnet mounts

For installing the magnets, it’s easy to get tripped up aligning the magnets (since one is attached to the lid and the other is attached to the body) and inadvertently getting the polarity backwards so the magnets repel rather than attract each other. I also wanted the magnets to sit flush against each other when the lid was installed.

To get around all that, I first used CN glue to bond the magnet to the mount, then added the mating magnet so I could see how to make the top of the mount + magnet stack flush with the roof, then (plastic weld) bonded the mount to the body, and finally, used CN to bond the top magnet to the roof. For the last step, I put a thin spacer between the magnets, applied CN to the top magnet, and then attached to roof and pressed it all together. Overall, this approach made it easy to line everything up, keep the polarity straight, and get everything bonded together. Here’s how it looks in the end. I’m happy with how it turned out

I also took the plunge and assembled the spare. It was less work than I remember for the others, but then it’s only 1 vs 6, lol! The beadlock has more of a matte finish than the wheels that came with the kit. I like it - may try to achieve something similar with the others.

We focused on the wooden bed next. It’s more of a laminate, but close enough, lol! I haven’t done this kind of thing before and honestly, had mixed expectations for the outcome. One bonus for a build thread is you’re free to exclude anything that dings your apparent skills, haha!

The first step is getting some wood. I decided to use 1/16” thick basswood and made a spreadsheet to figure out the width. Basswood is easy to find and comes in a large variety of dimensions that are well matched to RC models. For the spreadsheet, I looked at things like the required number of boards, any leftover gaps, the board width if scaled up to 1:1, etc. In the end, I settled on 3/8” thickness. Scaled up to full size, this is around 5 1/4” ~ 6” which should look reasonable. It’s also only 20 boards which seemed likely to fit within the spare time I have to work on kits!

The mini mitre saw I used for the magnet mounts worked perfectly with the basswood; clean cuts and it was easy to line up the boards for equal lengths. I made each one slightly too long (maybe a mm or so) and then sanded to fit. The whole process went much faster than I expected. Here’s how it looked at the end

Almost done ... except for the spacers on each side, D’oh! The spacers are leftover boards installed on their side (3/16” worth of gap total), which unfortunately doesn’t look super awesome. So much for spreadsheets, lol! But no fear, basswood actually comes in 3/32” width by 1/16” thick strips - one on each side and blamo, no gaps!

Thanks to the magic of television, or in my case delinquency updating the build thread + ordering the magic 3/32” gap fillers and cutting them to length, here’s the ‘final’ product. The 3/32” boards are the thin ones on the left / right sides of the bed.

I’m excited with how it turned out. The boards fit together tightly, but not so much that they want to jump out. I may or may not need to glue them down, but probably will do this anyway.

The next step is to weather the wood and glue it down. I’m going to paint the bed and weather the boards first. For the weathering, we’re trying the steel wool + vinegar ‘stain’ method. Hoping that turns out well!

This one is going to be short. I made the steel wool and vinegar solution to weather the wood, but some yard varmint knocked it over and so I had to start over. It should be ready again by this weekend hopefully.

In the meantime ... I decided to attach the tool boxes with more of the magnets that I used to attach the roof. The stack height for two magnets was almost a perfect match to the height of the mounting plates on the boxes. Plus I’m not a fan of the mounting plates themselves, which seem prone to easily breaking off, especially since the boxes are exposed under the truck.

Here’s the bed with the boxes installed

And with one of the boxes removed to show the magnets. I used a three-point mount for each box

The mounting is solid, with no worries about the boxes falling off. It’s also somewhat compliant, which should reduce chances for breakage.

Made a few more steps toward the finish line this weekend. I was planning to add the metal rails for the bed after painting everything else, but decided this probably would not to turn out well and instead added them now. I’m planning to mask them off during painting to keep the stock black color. Here’s how they look after installation. Lots of sanding for the Styrene bits that hold them in. Thankful I got a decent set of diamond files to make this easier. Definitely recommend patience for this kit.

I also weathered the wood slats for the bed. The first step was making a test piece to compare the results with and without a pre-coat of black tea. Here’s the results. The bottom third on the left-hand-side is without any “stain.” The next third to the right is the vinegar + steel wool alone while the right-most third was painted with black tea first to increase the tannins and this the weathering effect.

The family consensus was to skip the tea (too black) and go instead with the vinegar + steel wool solution alone. In total it had soaked for around a week. The solution itself is somewhat nasty with green bits and other funk floating in the fluid. I used a brush to apply it from its ‘creation’ mason jar. No idea what to do with the leftovers now that we’re done. Yum.

Here’s the wood before

And here it is a few hours after once everything dried

I’m happy with how it turned out. Looks weathered and crappy, lol!

I also painted the cab with primer and sanded the bed and tool boxes in preparation for primer. I’m hoping for more painting progress this week if the weather cooperates. Seemingly endless rainy days here, lol!